A note on Develop has further indications that Battlefield 3 will not be released through Steam, as speculation mounts that DICE's military shooter sequel will not appear on Valve's download service. They quote a comment from a report from financial research firm Baird based on a meeting with GameStop: "The upcoming EA title Battlefield 3 will be sold as a download through GameStop, but not through Steam," Baird says GameStop executives told them. "Given Steam's dominance – and insistence on users downloading a Steam client application – publishers are likely to be receptive to a competitive alternative." Thanks Computer and Video Games.

It's time for someone to introduce some critical thinking and reason into the conversation.

We know that EA's Crysis 2 was removed from Steam while there are other older EA titles still on Steam. EA says:"Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service -- many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam." Source http://pc.ign.com/articles/117/1176517p1.htmlI haven't seen Valve dispute this, please post evidence to the contrary. I think it's reasonable to assume that Valve's silence on the EA statement implies agreement.

Can you blame EA for wanting to create their own service for their own games? It's a smart revenue driven decision. Can you blame Valve for imposing the DLC requirements for their service? It's a smart revenue driven decision. None of the decisions are consumer friendly. They are not doing what's best for the consumer. They both made decisions that are anti-consumer. If all the other download services don't impose the same Valve DLC rules, then that would explain why BF3 is not going to be on Steam. Does it not?

Maybe Valve can change their DLC policy and we can see what EA does. Now that would be fun to see.

By the way, let's be 100% sure that BF3 is not going to be on Steam, from a more reliable source, say the company that is publishing it, EA.

Disclosure: All my games I have are all on Steam, except for Witcher 2 which was purchased through GOG.com